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because he has not realize the success of the Apple stores had nothing to do with him, except that he was good Indian for Jobs. We all know the entire store idea was Steves and this guy just did what Steve told him to do. I bet he is not evens sure what specifically made it successful. Honestly, I am not 100% sure myself, it may a combination of things. But he is not actually grasping it himself, look at the mess he created at JC Penny.

I'm not sure where you get this information/opinion but I was told by an Apple employee that's very high up in the ladder that at first Steve hated the idea of the retail stores and was only convinced to move ahead with it after seeing the pilot store they opened and how successful it was.

I've wondered much the same thoughts. His failure at leading the charge to change up J C P, as he was fain to call it, was a spectacular failure. So much so, it calls into question his whole apparent Apple success.

While I'm not claiming that you're absolutely wrong, when I read the specifics of what he did and wanted to do at JCP, I agreed with them. The problem was that he misread the JCP shopper: they wanted to maintain all the idiocies of the past. For example, Johnson wanted to eliminate coupons and phony sales and simply lower the prices in the store. But I saw some interviews with JCP shoppers and at least among those interviewed, they liked coupons and they liked the idea of waiting for sales and markdowns, even though they admitted that in the end they'd be paying the same.

He also tried to upscale the store a bit by adding boutiques, much like Target did by adding some "designer" products into the mix. Sounds reasonable, right? But in the case of JCP, it alienated the core shoppers who no longer felt welcome in the store.

Where I think he did err was in thinking he could reshape JC Penney by using the same techniques as the Apple stores, which generally attract a completely different audience and which sells products (except for third party peripherals) that you can't buy discounted somewhere else. Apple also sells a relatively small number of items and JC Penney sells tens of thousands.

I think Johnson thought he could expand the business by getting higher income customers into the store, but that was never going to happen in any case. But when it comes down to it, what else could he do to expand sales? Current customers weren't providing enough. I had to laugh when I researched this some time back because a Sears executive criticized what Johnson tried to do. A Sears executive??!!!! Sears is closer to death than JCP is. The fact is that almost all traditional physical retail is in big trouble. A still-weak economy, especially for the economic demos who would shop at a JCP; absurdly high rents in the most desirable locations, generally shoddy merchandise, an over-abundance of physical retail in many areas and e-commerce, especially Amazon's domination, are all contributing to end much physical retail, especially for hard goods.

And in the end, JCP isn't doing much better now than it was under Johnson.

Also, wasn't it written that Jobs had one concept for the Apple store and when Johnson came in he told Jobs that the concept was wrong and Jobs agreed and they pretty much started over from scratch? If I'm recalling that correctly, Johnson does deserve lots of credit although I'd love to know how different the original concept was. Or would any type of Apple retail done well simply because other computer stores were going out of business, like CompUSA?

I'm not sure where you get this information/opinion but I was told by an Apple employee that's very high up in the ladder that at first Steve hated the idea of the retail stores and was only convinced to move ahead with it after seeing the pilot store they opened and how successful it was.

Actually the idea was already on Steve's mind when he hire Ron, it was not like Ron was there and convinced Steve he had to go retail with their computer products. Yes Ron did the mock up, because that is what Steve required no different than what they did with products. Jony Ive would put a number of mocks up together and Steve would tell him which one he thought were best. Steve follows the same formula for everything and Do not think for a minute that Ron talk to Steve and convince him he had to do a minimalist store for computers.

He good at running retail, but you are seeing what happen when he left on his own. Apple change the whole concept of a retail store should look like. I am beginning to see more stores who are clearing out floor space so you not bumping into people and merchandise as you shop. I read that Ron is claiming this was his idea, yeah right why not sell that to target then.